Staff and Leadership

Please find below an introduction to our church leaders and staff

Jamie Fredricks
Jamie is Minister in Training at Opengate. He’s a proper Bognor Boy and has been a member of the church since the early 90’s. After studying history and media studies, he then spent 16 years in the multimedia industry, working in video production, graphic design and web development.

He is now training for the Baptist Ministry, spending part of the week at Spurgeons College in London and the rest in Bognor working in the Church. He is married to Heidi and has two children, two chickens and enjoys playing guitar, making jam and using big theological words. He is now starting to learn what some of them mean too…

Julie Passmore
Julie has been a member here at Vic Drive since she became a Christian when she was a teenager. She started her working life in a bank before moving to a training company. She joined the leadership team in 2000 and after leaving secular employment at the end on 2004 became the Church’s administrator.

Her passion is to see people released into their gifts and achieving their full potential. She has been married to Ian for 25 years and they have a teenage son, Joel.

Tom Mills
Tom has been a part of Opengate church now for 9 years and heads up the worship team. Tom grew up in a musical family and has been involved in bands and worship teams from a young age. He studied music at Chichester Tech college and now works as a producer by day and enjoys writing, recording and music making with a variety of artists, bands and worship leaders. He also helps run The Push Community which exists to help develop and support songwriters, worship leaders and promote community among musicians and creative people.

Tom is married to Fiona and they have 2 beautiful daughters, Frankie and Ava.

Derek Cormell
Derek was born and grew up in North Cheshire before leaving home to go to UWIST Cardiff where he obtained his Mathematics and Physics degree, followed by teacher training at Bristol University. When he was a young child his Church began a Sunday School especially for him – Derek recognises that this was a provision from a gracious God and testifies to the continual evidence of God’s grace on his life. After graduating from university he became a Mathematics teacher, moving into the area in 1977 to head up the Maths department in a local secondary school.

He is now retired from teaching which leaves him more time to exercise his teaching and pastoral gifts within the Church. He heads up the pastoral team with his wife Miranda. He and Miranda have a house group and run “Freedom in Christ” sessions. He is amazed by the graciousness of Father, the compassion of Jesus, the power of the Holy Spirit and expects to see God move in His church.

Miranda Cormell
Miranda is married to Derek and together they head up the Church Pastoral Team. They have two grown up sons, both active in their own churches. Miranda was trained and worked in Social Research for a number of years before accepting an invitation in 1992 to take on the newly created role of Church Administrator. She held this position for twelve and a half years, working with 3 different pastors, before handing over the baton to Julie Passmore in 2005.

Miranda is involved in several different town wide community projects, as well as her own ‘English for Migrant Workers Project’, and loves any opportunity to help different people, churches and organisations to network and build God’s Kingdom together. She enjoys film, playing the flute, learning how to dance (Ballroom and Latin), swimming and simply being with friends.

Elisa Evitts
Elisa is a Bognor girl born and bred, is married to Roger and has three children. She has been a Christian since she was a teenager and first attended Revelation church, but after hearing God as a family they moved to Opengate. Originally trained as a pharmacy technician, she chose to leave the profession to raise her children.

Elisa has a passion for hearing the prophetic and using art as a platform to express the word of God. She loves to see God encourage others, particularly through prayer. Elisa is often found hurtling through the water at the local swimming pool and also likes doing crafting. She loves her two cats and is often found singing gospel music while doing the housework!

Jo Parnell
Jo came to know Jesus as Saviour and friend as a child through Sunday School, in a little mission church in Chatham, Kent. As such, the need to love and disciple children has always been close to her heart.

While a teenager at WEC Camps, she received a call to serve the Lord overseas. After working as an Infants Teacher for five years, Jo trained at Bible School, learned French and linguistics, then went to Burkina Faso in West Africa.

Her calling is “to prepare God’s people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up” Eph 4:11. After learning the Lobire language, God led her into the ministry of training Sunday School teachers and preparing teaching materials. Jo was particularly involved in improving literacy and training literacy workers. The church needed trained pastors so this became her main ministry.

After 22 years in Burkina Jo was called by God to return to UK in 1992. She then worked in Worthing helping to prepare and send out Bientot, a gospel paper sent out free to French speaking parts of the world.

Nick White
Nick is a father of three and, together with his wife Sue, has played a major role in leading, playing and training others in the development of music and worship at Opengate. He has a particular interest in the prophetic and has developed a passion for the clear, incisive Word of God to penetrate lives and “separate bone from marrow” in the souls of believers.

He is secretary of the Ambassadors Football Club and is still hanging on to the belief that at the age of 45 he can contribute to the world of football in his role as captain of the First X1. Nick is the head teacher of a primary school in Rustington and his career spans almost 25 years in West Sussex. Nick describes himself as an “oppositional thinker” in that he is quite comfortable in disagreeing with anybody about almost anything and loves the cut and thrust of debate – as long as there’s a smile and hug afterwards!